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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/DryDefenderRS on 2025-11-04 13:55:32+00:00.

After another weekend of multiple teams converting on the uber-predictable 2 minute drill when down 3, and other fans somehow still being surprised at it happening, I decided to actually get the numbers on it.

Here are some quick parameters:

  1. The team must be down 1-3 points (need a FG to survive)
  2. The drive must start with at least 30 seconds left
  3. The drive must end after the 2 minute warning (those that end before aren’t quite game-ending if they fail.)
  4. The team can’t be past midfield at the 2 minute warning (they can’t already be basically in FG range once getting the ball back becomes effectively impossible.)

And the result that I found is pretty much summarized in the title. Teams have made the field goal just over 70% of the time, and the defense only stops the offense short of FG range and doesn’t get bailed out by special teams 18.5% of the time.

At this point, coaches need to catch up and adapt to how effective offenses are when they need an FG to survive. Teams need to give legitimate consideration to intentionally not scoring and trying to time their TD to be at under 25 seconds left if the opponent has 1 or 0 timeouts and they have at least 1 remaining. Coaches should also consider taking more risks on 4th down if they can take the lead with a FG so as to avoid giving their opponent time.

Either that, or DCs need to figure out WTF to do when calling plays against a 2 minute drill, because what they’re doing isn’t working.

Edit: A selection bias just occurred to me that causes these to be slight over-estimates by biasing the starting field position forward. Drives that start with over 2 minutes left can fail early and not get counted as fails, but get counted as a success so long as they’re slow enough getting to midfield that the 2 minute warning happens by then. That makes the effective starting field position for the purposes of this selection heuristic wherever they were at the 2 minute warning.

If I had to take a guess at the “true” 2mg FG success rate after mentally downgrading it for this bias and some regression to the mean, I’d guess 60% not 70%. That’s still fairly high though.